


Disappears Late One Night

by starghost



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Hogwarts, M/M, Marauders' Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-30
Updated: 2016-01-30
Packaged: 2018-05-17 05:48:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5856532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starghost/pseuds/starghost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Remus disappearing and Sirius fretting. School days. Originally posted to LJ circa 2005.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Disappears Late One Night

He disappears late one night, just vanishes. His bed is warm, with his shape still pressed into the cushion of the mattress and pillow. Sirius puts his hand where Remus's head would lay.

"Where is he?" he asks no one. No one else is awake. No one else seemed to have heard the sound, a sudden clap and cut-short bark of a shout that made Sirius sit straight up in his bed and see the curtains blown out, just a bit, on Remus's bed. He was energized from the waking, but at the same time is now very tired. James had gotten him into a long and vigorous snowball fight against the fifth years earlier in the day, which had been followed by at least an hour's flight in the cold brisk air, which James claimed would help Sirius focus and think, since he'd been doing so poorly as of late. Sirius had thrown another snowball then, nearly knocking James's glasses off his face.

Sirius lies down in the warm cave of Remus's blankets and falls asleep; his dreams are strange and he forgets them on waking. James jumps on top of him.

"What have you done with Moony, eh? Had a bit of a midnight snack, have we?" Sirius stares at him blearily, wondering and then realizing, and he scrambles up and takes James by the shoulders, shaking him.

"He disappeared, James, he disappeared in the middle of the night, and no one else noticed, and we've got to find him, we've got to."

James raises an eyebrow at him. "So Remus is at the library and you snuck some firewhiskey without me. What a mate you are." James slides out of his grip and makes his way out of the dormitory, rolling his eyes.

Sirius sits in the bed, blankets tangled around his legs. He stretches, lays back, and under the pillow his hand runs into a small book, brown leather and worn. The first few pages are grocery lists, plans for attending the Quidditch World Cup six cups past, and then Remus's handwriting starts in-- Sirius pages through, half skimming and half not wanting to spy, not wanting to betray *that* trust Remus has in him too.

The last entry is from the day before, and it only says "I feel my luck is running dry, and I'll be out there soon enough. I shouldn't have-- Maybe I shouldn't have listened to the headmaster this once. Bollocks. I hope -- I don't want to leave them. I don't want to be taken from the best mates I've ever had."

Sirius stares and stares, and reads the entry over and over. The entries before it, none of them mention anything relevant or sensible. The only thing of interest, outside of planning schoolwork, worrying about family, detailing a prank, the only thing is one line -- "I'm afraid I'm going to go somewhere where Sirius can't possibly, and it will be lonelier than never knowing him." -- and Sirius can make neither head nor tail of it. He can't think of a place Remus could go he wouldn't go along, in some way or other, even now when he could be anywhere.

He dresses quickly, puts the book in one pocket and his wand in the other, and heads to the first person he can think of who might believe him, because after all the detentions he's become rather good friends with her.

She's in her office, it being a Saturday but with no Gryffindor quidditch, marking papers, and when he enters she looks up with a brisk "Yes, Mr. Black?" The dust in the room (someone must've been cleaning furiously, he's sure) makes him cough before he replies, which is to hold out Remus's notebook and say "He disappeared last night, and I want to know why, and I want him back here where he rightly should be."

McGonagall looks at him, stern as ever, and takes the book. She flips through it briskly, right to the last entry where the handwriting jumps at her clearly, same as in so many essays and exams through the years.

"He disappeared?" Her voice sounds doubtful, almost mocking, and his reply is indignant.

"With a clap and a sound like someone snapped their hand over his mouth before he could make hardly a sound, but he *did*, he woke me up but he was gone before I opened my eyes. He disappeared, professor, and his bed was still warm when I put my hand on it, and he's just gone now."

She looks between him and the page of the book, pushes back from her desk and motions him to follow. She leads him straight to the headmaster's office, up the long round stair to his office full of things bright and shiny, small and large. Dumbledore sits at his desk as if he had been waiting for Sirius, and greets him kindly.

"Thank you for bringing him, Minerva." She nods and exits, leaving Sirius to take a lemon drop from Dumbledore and sit across from him.

A small golden contraption on the desk emits a puff of amber smoke. Dumbledore simply sits and peers at Sirius over his glasses, a frustratingly calm expression on his face.

Sirius blurts out "Where is he, sir, and who's taken him?" He hates that he's lost this battle of wills, but he can't stand the silence, suffocating all thoughts out of his head except why Remus kept another secret from him, after all this time.

"He is in good hands."

"The kind of good hands that take him in the middle of the night without telling any of his friends? How did they take him, anyway? You can't App--"

"No, you can't Apparate. But there are ways that we use should the need arise. They're quite complicated, you see, and usually too much trouble." Sirius closes his eyes very tightly to keep from leaping across the desk and doing something that would surely get him expelled. "Put simply, you weren't told because there was no time. He is safer this way."

"Why? And when will he be back, sir?" Sirius is biting back insolence.

"Because he agreed to do something for me, to try something for me. A week, I should think, at the most. A week, if things go well. Hours if they go very badly."

Sirius hopes to God that Remus would be gone a week, though it hurts to think of his side of that time; he doesn't want things to go badly. He imagines what badly could be, and starts to feel sick as images of Remus torn and broken, bloody and barely breathing, worse than any full moon tear through his head, and images of worse, of him untouched but a bolt of green magic fading in the air in front of him, and he clutches the book in his hands.

Back in the tower, he walks past James and Lily making eyes at each other from across the room, ignores Peter's cry for him to play a game of Exploding Snap, and climbs the stairs. He lies in Remus's bed, tucks the journal under the pillow, and reads a book from Remus's trunk. James brings him dinner, calls him demented, then asks if he needs to go to the Hospital Wing, and takes it as a no when Sirius pelts him with a pillow. The bed is warm from his own body heat now, and the pages of the book are worn where his thumbs rest, where Remus's thumbs and the thumbs of other past readers would have rested. There is enough light through the windows, bright winter sun and light reflected off the snow, that he reads the entire day without needing to cast lumos. The sun sets early, and Sirius puts the book aside and rolls over, curling up and wondering if this is how Remus was laying when they took him, if he was scared, if he's cold now wherever he is.

In the middle of the night he thinks he hears a snap, and he sits up from his dream to see nothing but the dark room. His own bed, empty. He lies back down and tries to sleep.

The next day he begins to plot. James, now, agrees with him that Remus being gone, just *gone* for a whole day in the middle of the month is suspicious, and they discuss it heatedly over the end of breakfast, stealing glasses of juice and slices of toast up to the tower where James too reads the entry in Remus's notebook. And he stares at Sirius.

"I don't get it. Dumbledore knows? It's his fault!"

Sirius shakes his head, takes the book back. "Of course he knows, but he still thinks it's safe and won't tell me a bloody thing about it." The sun glints brightly off a jar of ink, and Sirius looks outside, and says "Let's fly on it. You think best on a broom, and I don't seem to think at all, so let's fly on it."

There is no wind, but the air is biting cold and makes it very hard for Sirius to draw breath, especially so high above the ground. He clings to the broom, his fingers stiff inside his gloves, and drifts lazily in the air, trying to fill his lungs and trying to think, and he can see a lost scarf in Hufflepuff black and yellow freezing in the snow by the stands; he can see birds sitting in branches covered in snow; a dark shadow at the edge of the Forbidden Forest lurking. The sky is grey and what little color there is in everything he can see comes from him, and James, and the scarf, with the rest of the students taking shelter inside while doing schoolwork. He twists around the goalposts and watches James climb in the sky and dive down, brush the snow with his toes and pull up to circle the field.

When they go inside, red cheeked and half frozen, James pushes his glasses up on his nose. "You don't think it has to do with... Well. You know." Sirius shoots him a look.

"Of course it does." He can't help but sound harsh and strained, and he looks at anything but James for the entirety of their walk.

He strips off his scarf, his gloves, a boot, before he sees a note hovering just above his trunk, and he grabs it and reads the short message. "Remus Lupin has returned, and you may visit him in the Hospital Wing at your convenience." Sirius dashes from the room, kicking off his other boot and falling down in the process, but not ever quite stopping, and ignoring James when he shouts. The railing of the stairs is smooth enough that he slides down and hops off into a run out the door, down the hall, all the way to the Hospital Wing, and it's not until he gets there, breathless and panting and leaning on the wall, that he can almost hear James shouting and running behind him. Sirius pushes through the doors.

Before Madam Pomfrey can stop him, Sirius rushes over to the bed where Remus is sitting and reading, legs crossed and covers neatly made under him, and nearly knocks him over.

"I thought Voldemort had taken you," he says into Remus's neck. He is half on the bed with Remus and sits there not letting go until Remus says "What?"

Sirius pulls back and shakes him and swallows until he can get a little bit angry. "You didn't tell me anything, and you disappeared! The only thing I could find out was that *you* knew beforehand and that *Dumbledore* knew and you were gone." Remus pushes Sirius's hands off of him.

"You found my journal." The tone is not accusatory or angry, but it eats at Sirius and he wants to look away or walk away until he sees a bandage on Remus's arm.

"You kept a secret from me! And not just a little one, like that you secretly fancy Gabriella, but a big dangerous one, Remus! A big dangerous one that you knew wouldn't stay a secret."

Now he looks away.

The rest of the wing is empty. Even Madam Pomfrey is busying herself in another room. The curtains are drawn so that the light isn't as bright, the shadows aren't as crisp; he has nothing to look at out the windows, and so he looks at the pitcher of water on the table. Looks at the bed sheet wrinkled under him.

"I couldn't tell you." Sirius glances at him, and Remus is looking down at the bed, playing with the bandage on his arm, face drawn tight. "I didn't know how. It wasn't likely to happen, anyway. It wasn't really supposed to happen until spring even if it did."

"What happened?" Sirius twists a little, almost curving around to meet Remus's eyes, but he stops at leaning in front of him and watching his eyes shut. He puts his hand over Remus's to still it and stop his fiddling. "What happened?"

Remus looks up at him. "It was a wild idea of the headmaster's. He found a group of werewolves that were mostly our age and younger; werewolves since, well, younger than I was, mostly. Not sworn allegiance to either side, far as he could divine. Thought maybe I could talk to them. Just a try, at least. I don't know why it had to be now." Remus pauses, looks off to the side. "But they didn't like me. Because of my education. So I came back."

"They hurt you?" Sirius touches the bandage on his arm, looks closely at his face.

Remus shakes his head. "There were nails sticking out different places in the cabin-- house-- place they were staying, and I was in a hurry, scraped myself when I left. Were you-- Were you that worried?"

He can't get a simple yes out of his mouth before he pulls Remus to him so tightly that a puff of air is pushed out of his lungs, and Remus lets out a half laugh of relief and uncertainty, and he doesn't move except to put his forehead down on Sirius's shoulder and ask in a muffled voice "How much did you read? I can't remember if I ever-- Did I write about you?"

"Not really, maybe, why?" The one sentence that had bothered him he hasn't thought of since he read it, and now he is focused on Remus, who is perfectly healthy and warm and smells like snow and the woods and his bed, which makes perfect sense, but Remus wriggles a little, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand like he does when he's thinking hard about whether he should approve of a prank or not. He keeps his face hidden and takes a deep breath.

"I don't secretly fancy *Gabriella*." He says it in a tired way that makes it clear there is someone else, and waits. A moment passes, then Sirius opens his eyes wide for a moment as the sentence rushes back into his head.

"Oh," Sirius says, and says it again, and sits there with his arms wrapped around Remus who is curled into him, and he follows it up with "All right, then." Because it makes sense to say that, when he spent the last day feeling like his heart was somewhere else and he didn't know what to do about it other than find Remus. Now he's found Remus, who sits up and looks him in the eye, apprehensive and curious. Sirius brushes his fingers against Remus's cheek, and the unease disappears from his face, so Sirius can't help but grin and say "Well, then. What do you think comes after this?" which makes both of them laugh. Sirius can't manage to stop touching Remus lightly as if to reaffirm that he's there; when he finds himself holding Remus's face in his hands it seems perfectly natural to close that last distance and kiss him.


End file.
